Icy Resolve
by WraithLoverQueen
Summary: Fill of Kink meme. The team crash lands on an icy mountain and they need to find a cave to wait until Fury can get them. It's getting dark and they have no light, that is until Tony takes off his jacket and uses the arc reactor to light their way.


A/N: I'm not ditching my other stories. This was just a fill for the Avengers kink meme on LJ. Hope you guys like it. ^^'

_**EDIT 3/13/13: This is a one shot and I won't be making a sequel or continuing this so pleasing stop following it. But reviews on why you guys like it or hate it are always welcome.**_

Icy Resolve

It started out a pretty easy ending to a rough mission. Everyone was exhausted and Thor was unconscious, no one was really sure what happened but he just sort of collapsed after battle. It probably had something to do with the fact that he had to take a battalion of these crazy steroid monsters without using lightning otherwise he would have fried his entire team on fighting on the wet, metal building. It didn't really seem to matter at this point anyways; they were all safe and they had stopped that whack job of a scientist. Everyone just sort of slumped into their chairs as Thor slept soundly on the floor. Tony stared out the window of the small jet they were in, eager to take off his suit but there was no room and no equipment to get it off properly. He sighed and took a sip of his drink. He watched the other Avengers all relaxing in their respective ways while Clint flew the plane. Tony had felt oddly on edge since he had gotten to the jet, he played it off to just wanting to jet home to Pepper but in reality it was his subconscious trying to warn him. It hadn't register to him that he had noticed something wrong with the jet out of the corner of his eye while boarding. He too was starting to finally force himself to relax into the seat when their ride home suddenly jerked awkwardly. His eyes, which had been closing from exhaustion, snapped open as he heard Clint swear slightly and the jet continued to jerk.

"Hey, Birdboy, what's goin' on up there?" He called to the front of the jet. Now the other three started to look towards Clint.

"Not sure, look like an engine failure…" He scrabbled with the controls and grunted, "I can't seem to stabilize it…!" The archer was starting to sound the slightest bit frantic and everyone's heart began to speed up slightly; at this height and speed everyone except probably Thor would die. Tony watched as Steve buckled up and Natasha scrambled to the co-pilots seat to try and help Clint. Somewhere in the back of his mind Tony knew that this wouldn't help in the least, he was an engineer and knew how this contraption worked. Sighing again and downing the rest of his drink, feeling it burn his throat at the mass amount of liquid going down, he slipped his faceplate down and unbuckled.

"Tony, where are you going?" Steve's voice told Tony that the soldier had a good idea but just wanted to confirm it.

"Don't get your nickers in a twist, Gramps, I'll be back." Tony replied, trying to sound snarky but it didn't quite come out the way he wanted as he opened the latch of the jet to get out. He vaguely heard the Captain call out to him as the harsh winds pulled him out. It took mere seconds for him to shake of the disorientation and quickly started up the thrusters on his suit; heading for under the jet. His mind just kind of went on auto pilot as helped to stabilize the jet while Clint took care of the steering. They both knew that Tony was already exerting what little energy he had felt and that they needed to land, problem was that the terrain below was all jagged hills and mountain tops. Tony caught himself getting slight distracted by the mass amounts of snow blasting into the optic sensors of his suit, making it hard to see.

"JARVIS, how much power do I have left?"

"Not enough to get you past the rough terrain, sir…." Tony sighed, they had to land this thing soon.

"Hey, Barton!" He called through the comm in his suit.

"Yeah, Tony?"

"We're gonna land this thing, prepared the others."

"What? Are you crazy? We can't land here, you and the jet can't take it."

"So the suit gets messed up, I'll just make another. I let go and you all die." He cut off the comm before Clint could protest and began to guide the aircraft downward. They started towards the land at an alarming speed and the passing events seemed to jumble together. Last thing Tony remembered before waking up half buried in snow was hitting quite a few of those jagged hills. He tried to move but it proved to be rather impossible.

"JARVIS?"

"Y-yes, Sir-r?" The AI's was static-y and jumping, clear signs that something was wrong with the suit.

"What's our status?"

"Sir-r, the s-suit se-eems to hav-ve been high d-damaged in the crash-h…"

"Alright, shut down. I'll see you and pepper at home."

"F-farewel-ll, S-sir…" Tony's eyes slipped closed as he took a breath, luckily, it didn't seem like his had been severely damaged, just kind of achy. He didn't get time to dwell on his as he felt himself being lifted and the suit being yank off of him. The sudden light hurt his eyes and he stared up to see that Thor was awake and the opening suit.

"Hey there, you finally up, big guy?" Tony gave the Asgardian goofy grin.

"I have son of Stark. Come, we must get you warm clothing." Tony had to agree with the man, it was freezing outside his suit! Luckily, they had dragged him into the remains of the jet, it was slightly warmer than outside.

"Tony! What were you thinking? You could've been seriously hurt!" Tony sighed as he was bombarded by Steve's worried words.

"Whoa, settle down, Mother Hen!" Tony scrambled out of him suit and smirked up the worried Captains, "I'm fine, now where's those extra clothes?" Steve sighed but let it go, he wasn't gonna win this fight.

"Here." Natasha handed Tony the extra winter closes and he began to quickly pull them on.

"Sorry to interrupt but see should find a cave to wait out the night, Clints already notified S.H.I.E.L.D. but this thing has too many holes to hold out the cold all night like a cave would." Bruce's quiet voice was barely heard by the shuffling Avengers. Steve perked at this, he hated the cold.

"Bruce's right but we have to hurry, it's getting dark." They all nodded, somewhere in their subconscious, they all knew that there were no flashlights in the aircraft. Gathering what little food and water supplies there were, the team headed into the snow.

They had been walking for about thirty minutes now and it was completely dark. The new moon shedding no light upon their path of white snow.

"Ugh… It's too dark, even if there was a cave we'd never find it in this dark…." Steve grumbled out, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. Tony listened as his teammates talked amongst themselves.

'_Cap's right, we're all gonna die out here if we don't find that cave!'_ He thought to himself, _'Think, Stark!'_ Mere seconds later, the worse yet best idea hit him.

"Stark, what are you doing? This is no time for a strip tease!" Natasha growled out, hearing the sound of a zipper being undone from Tony's general direction.

"Ack!" The group called out as they were suddenly bombarded by the bright blue light of Tony's arc reactor as his heavy jackets slipped off his should and fell to the freezing snow, leaving him in only his T-shirt and pants.

"Tony, what're you thinking! Put your coat back on, you'll freeze!" Steve growled, not in anger but in worry as they watched Tony begin to shiver and rub his arms.

"I put the coat back on and we have no light, which means no cave, which means we all freeze!" Tony retorted, he could feel the icy wind biting at his skin, "Now hurry up and follow me!" He picked a random direction from where they were and started that way. The others began to follow but he could hear them grumbling about how stupid he was and how he shouldn't be doing this; he just ignored them and kept going.

It didn't take very long for the temperatures to drop even lower, making it painful for the Avengers to watch their teammate freeze for their sake. They felt a great pain in their chest as they watch Tony stumble forward on shivering legs. Sometimes he would stumble too much and nearly fall but Steve and Thor were always there to catch him. The only thing keeping him going was the thought that after all this was over he'd get to crawl into a nice warm bed next to Pepper and sleep for a month. The minutes turned to half hours and Tony continuously refused to let Steve or Thor carry him. Though his own will began to fail as the hypothermia set in, making him shiver harder and stop suddenly in bouts severe mental confusion.

"T-there…..!" Tony finally hissed out as he rose a shaking hand to point at a slightly hidden, he promptly collapsed in the show afterwards.

"Good." Steve quickly pointed at Thor, "Thor, grab Tony, we gotte a get him out of this cold! Everyone, to the cave!" They all nodded and the Asgardian scooped up Tony, wrapping him up in his cape but still letting the reactor show the way.

The little group of heroes huddled together in the cave. Thor still holding Tony as Bruce and Steve forced the unconscious scientist into his discarded coat as Clint and Natasha worked on getting a fire started to try and block out some of the cold. They laid Tony near the small fire and gathered close to share their body heat with him as he shivered through a fitful sleep. By morning, once S.H.I.E.L.D appeared, Fury and a recovering Coulson walked into the cave to find a dying fire and a dog pile of sleeping Avengers surrounding a slightly sickly looking Tony Stark. The two quickly roused the heroes and rushed them back to Fury's jet.

What felt like months later but was really only a few days, Tony awoke to find himself cuddled in a warm bed. An annoying beeping sound echoing in his ears. He slowly opened his eyes at the feel of something messing with his hair and his pillow began to move. He was in while hospital room with his head on Pepper's lap as she gently combed her fingers through his hair in a soothing manor.

"Hey there, Beautiful." She gave a soft laugh at his quiet words as he looked around the room, his team were asleep all around him. In chairs, on the floor and counter tops, he could even see Clint's leg sticking out of the air vent.

"Go back to sleep, Mr. Hero…."

"…M'kay…." He drifted back to sleep with a slight smile on his face.

Fin.

Original Prompt: So the team are on a mission in the snowy mountains, and their jet ends up crashing. Tony's got the suit, so he flies out and does his best to stabilize the jet as it falls. He slows them down enough so that even though they crash land, everyone, including him, is virtually unharmed. However, the suit is too badly dented to move in, so he's forced to take it off and change into the spare winter clothes they brought. They're searching for a cave or something to stay in until SHIELD can come find them, but before they find one, it gets dark out, and they can't see a thing. If they don't find something to block the elements, even with the heavy coats they'll all freeze. They don't have any source of light, or so they think, until Tony takes off all his gear until he's just in his thin tee shirt and the light from the arc reactor is enough to give them a path. However, he's freezing. The team insists he put his coat back on, but he points out that without the reactor's light, they'll all be stuck in the snow and they'll _all_freeze. By the time they find a nearby cave to settle in, Tony's already freezing, and even with the coat back on can't seem to warm up. Also I wouldn't say no to some cuddling in the cave, y'know, to warm him up.

By the time SHIELD does find them, Tony's got hypothermia. He's fine in the end, but the team were worried that he wouldn't be


End file.
